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Crime Bitcoin

FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried Arrested (coindesk.com) 171

Posted by BeauHD from the it's-about-time dept.
The Royal Bahamas Police Force arrested FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, a press statement said. CoinDesk reports: The arrest came after the U.S. filed criminal charges against Bankman-Fried, the statement said, and the nation expects the U.S. to request The Bahamas extradite Bankman-Fried in short order. "As a result of the notification received and the material provided therewith, it was deemed appropriate for the Attorney General to seek SBF's arrest and hold him in custody pursuant to our nation's Extradition Act," the statement, attributed to Attorney General Ryan Pinder, said. "At such time as a formal request for extradition is made, The Bahamas intends to process it promptly, pursuant to Bahamian law and its treaty obligations with the United States."

A tweet from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York confirmed that prosecutors in the U.S. indicted Bankman-Fried, though the indictment remains under seal. In the Bahamas' statement, Bahamas Prime Minister Philip Davis said the country would continue pursuing its own investigation into FTX's collapse, alongside the U.S.'s criminal charges. Bankman-Fried was set to testify virtually before the House Financial Services Committee about the exchange's collapse on Tuesday.
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FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried Arrested More

FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried Arrested

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  • Vote plz (Score:5, Funny)

    by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Monday December 12, 2022 @07:16PM (#63125866) Journal

    Anyone surprised? Please tell me below in the comments. (And don't forget to like and subscribe. And if you'd like to send me a donation, I accept FTX, link below in the sig much appreciated).

    • You forgot to ask us to click the bell icon too.

    • Kind of expected he would go missing on a diving excursion.
    • Anyone surprised? Yes, his name is Sam Bankman-Fried.

  • Bankman-Fried was set to testify virtually before the House Financial Services Committee about the exchange's collapse on Tuesday.

    Maybe he can now testify in person?

    • His lawyers will undoubtedly tell him to plead the fifth.

      • Apparently they already told him to shut up a long time ago. He obviously didn't, though.

        • Just today he was in a Twitter Space (not) answering questions. You can tell he's grown more cautious in how he characterizes his answers. A sign that he's being prepped by lawyers.

      • His lawyers will beg and beg for him to take the fifth. Eventually they'll give up and ask "your honor, we'd like permission to gag our client with a dirty sock."

        • I have this hunch they'll ask for the permission to use superglue and the prosecution will only accept if they also do the nose.

      • Not just his lawyers. A former prosecutor I follow on social media was pleading with him to stop talking himself into prison. SBF rejected the advice.

      • His lawyers will undoubtedly tell him to plead the fifth.

        He undoubtedly knows better than his lawyers.

    • He has the right to remain silent now that he has been arrested.
      • "I choose to waive that right. BLAAAHBLAAHAHHHAHAHHHH...!"

      • He has the right to remain silent now that he has been arrested.

        He had that right before. Everyone does, except if they've been granted immunity in exchange for testimony, in which case they can't invoke the 5th.

        My question is, how's he going to pay his lawyers? Crypto coin?

        He claims he's worth "close to nothing" now, but there's assets that have been acquired in the Bahamas that, if he tries to convert them to cash, you can be sure they'll be seized as proceeds of crime. They're probably in the process of being seized now anyway.

  • Protective Custody (Score:3)

    by zenlessyank ( 748553 ) on Monday December 12, 2022 @07:24PM (#63125894)

    I wonder how many folks want him dead. Guess we will see who has the real power.

    • They could simply send him over to Qatar as a World Cup journalist. They've been dropping off a bit lately.

    • Weird. Many people would have lost far more than tens of thousands of dollars. (Even if you didn't hold any money at FTX, this made the entire market take a giant dump.) Is one human life worth tens of thousands of dollars? Depends on what country you're from I guess. Death might be too easy of an escape for SBF. Rotting in the worst prison in the world might be a step better. Maybe send him to the Russian Gulag slave camps?

  • Forgot [wsfa.com] to hit send.

  • They took their sweet time (Score:3)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Monday December 12, 2022 @07:31PM (#63125924)

    Only good thing that can be said about him is that he did not run. Maybe he _is_ a true believer and just has, in the time-honored tradition of true believers, done all that massive damage with only the best intentions.

    • I'm pretty sure he thought that he is untouchable....

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jwhyche ( 6192 )

        Oh he was untouchable till the high ups managed to hide their involvement. Once that happened it was easy to throw him under the bus.

        • Oh he was untouchable till the high ups managed to hide their involvement. Once that happened it was easy to throw him under the bus.

          He was the founder and CEO. There is no higher up.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by jwhyche ( 6192 )

            Sorry, but I was thinking of politicians.

            • Sorry, but I was thinking of politicians.

              Based on what?

              That me made some political donations and played the philanthropist / public intellectual?

              Whose going to turn down the money? Where's the evidence that someone was inappropriately influenced much less "involved".

              And who would trust Brinkman to take a bullet for these unnamed politicians?

              You're just creating random conspiracy theories.

              • He gave money to the people that were supposed to oversee him which instead focused their efforts on Binance and other smaller operations which is what triggered this whole thing in the first place, the question from Binance CEO was why he wasnâ(TM)t being investigated for anything.

                • He gave money to the people that were supposed to oversee him which instead focused their efforts on Binance and other smaller operations which is what triggered this whole thing in the first place,

                  Who? The FTC? I'm pretty sure you can't donate to them.

                  Some random Democratic candidates? Did any of them have sway with the FTC?

                  I'm sure there are folks who donate to the right candidates, hire the right lobbyists, and make the right friends, and get inappropriately favourable regulatory treatment as a result.

                  But this guy seems too much of a putz for that. I'm thinking he was just new enough that no one had got around to it yet. The Binance probe in another story started in 2018 and they're still deciding

                  • If Epstein couldn't keep himself from getting arrested (considering Epstein had actual blackmail material), then this little crypto bro isn't going to be able to.

                    • If Epstein couldn't keep himself from getting arrested (considering Epstein had actual blackmail material), then this little crypto bro isn't going to be able to.

                      Oh, Epstein totally avoided jail based influence/blackmail [wikipedia.org]. The only reason he eventually ended up in prison is it hit the national papers and it was impossible to not prosecute him at that point.

                      Furthermore, if his Rolodex only involved one party I suspect his partners would have been exposed at some point since the scandal would be too juicy. The fact that the beans never got spilled tells me that both US parties found it in their interest to keep him quiet. I still suspect he killed himself (though I'm s

                    • Epstein's defense lawyers included Roy Black, Gerald Lefcourt, Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz, and former U.S. Solicitor General Ken Starr.

                      That's a high profile defense team.

                      Epstein straight up getting offed in prison is the one conspiracy theory I wouldn't be surprised to find out was true.

                      This guy died the same way. [wikipedia.org] It would be interesting to do some kind of investigation into the hanging suicide of high profile prisoners, to see if that's a preferred method of some organization.

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by gweihir ( 88907 )

                      but Epstein straight up getting offed in prison is the one conspiracy theory I wouldn't be surprised to find out was true.

                      Might have looked a bit like the raid on the Romans in "Life of Brian" with the different attackers stumbling over each other....

    • It's pretty clear that the ignorance is strong with this one.

    • Only good thing that can be said about him is that he did not run. Maybe he _is_ a true believer and just has, in the time-honored tradition of true believers, done all that massive damage with only the best intentions.

      He was hiding in Brazil, where apparently he bought lots of stuff using money scammed from "the business."

      Ho only agreed to testify virtually. He definitely didn't want to go back to the USA, where he knew he would be arrested.

    • He did run. He left the US and went to the Bahamas.

      Maybe he just didn't bribe the Bahamas authorities enough money.

      • He did run. He left the US and went to the Bahamas.

        No he didn't. He moved to the Bahamas in 2021. It's his primary residence. In order to "run" from something you need to have something to run from. Did he know a year in advance he was going to blow up his business in such a spectacular fashion?

      • Judging from how much he knows about the rest of the world and in general, I could even imagine that he thought he couldn't get arrested there.

        He knows so little that it's hard to gauge just how little.

    • Only good thing that can be said about him is that he did not run. Maybe he _is_ a true believer and just has, in the time-honored tradition of true believers, done all that massive damage with only the best intentions.

      I'm always a little surprised when these folks don't take off.

      Though part of it might be that no-extradition countries are generally not places you want to live [offshore-protection.com]. Not to mention in most situations most people simply go with the flow (into jail).

      He might have also lacked the funds to go on the lam, I expect he must have kept some crypto around but maybe he stored it all in FTX?

  • I guess that means no more interviews where he tries to put an innocence spin on the coverage to get ahead of the story and control the narrative.
    Plus no more making âoepromisesâ he will pay everrrrrryone back if only they give him some more sweet, sweet monies!

  • Pretty sure they've adderall been incriminated by their own words.

    • I think Sweet Caroline cut a deal. It was obvious that SBF was trying to throw her under the bus, but she got to the prosecutor first. Prisoner's Dilemma, first one to rat out the other wins unless both can keep their mouths shut.

      She probably put a whole millisecond of thought into it before she realized that SBF was not going to keep his mouth shut. Then it was off to the airport for the trip home. She'll put every knife in the collection into his back. And she should, turning on the waterworks did no good

  • SBF did not commit suicide.

    • If he were going to run he'd have done so by now. Heck there was even rumours that he did which he then denied straight away denying it and tweeting exactly where he was. That's like anti-running.

  • Put that man in charge of questioning and investigation. He has the power to see through bullshit smokescreens that SBF throws out, better than all the journalists and definitely the muppets at the SEC.

    • Journalists of all stripes know who signs their paychecks. You think all the propagandists who work for KCNA really believe what they're saying.

      As they used to say in the old country, we know how to read Pravda...do *you* know how to read the New York Times?

  • That Elizabeth Holmes and Bernie Madoff made. He let the scam get too big and people with real money and real power started to invest. You can rip off as many little old ladies and slashdotters you want but when billionaire money gets involved you're in trouble for real.

    • John Corzine is the poster boy for swindling the "right" people. No jail time for him.

      Bernie Madoff swindled the wrong people and got to die in prison. But he still lived longer than Epstein.

  • What kind of idiot "escapes" to a Caribbean island that has an extradition treaty with the United States?

    A quick google search brings up Afghanistan, Algeria, Andorra, Angola, Armenia, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brunei, Burkina Faso, Burma, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Cape Verde, the Central African Republic, Chad, Mainland China, Comoros, Congo (Kinshasa), Congo (Brazzaville), Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Indonesia, Ivory Coast

    • Anyone else sing this list in Yakko's voice?

      United States, Canada, Mexico, Panama Haiti, Jamaica, Peru, Republic Dominican, Cuba, Carribean Greenland, El Salvador too. ...

    • What kind of idiot "escapes" to a Caribbean island that has an extradition treaty with the United States?

      He didn't "escape". He has been living in the Bahamas since 2021, long before there was any indication that there was any problem at FTX what so ever, much less one that would put him on law enforcement's radar.

      There was a rumour that he "escaped" to Argentina but he denied that straight away tweeting he's still at home in the Bahamas, and the Bahaman authorities said they were watching him as a person of interest (so presumably he may have had difficulty leaving anyway).

  • Yeah, just wondering if there are any SBF sympathizers out there. Outside of some politicians......just wondering.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by linuxguy ( 98493 )
      Kevin O'Leary. The self-described, Mr Wonderful. Kevin says he was paid $15m by FTX. After the FTX collapse, Kevin said that he sympathizes with SBF and believes him. And that the $15m he was paid, was in FTX coins. And those coins have been lost.

  • Look out! (Score:3)

    by Orgasmatron ( 8103 ) on Monday December 12, 2022 @11:18PM (#63126368)

    SBF didn't kill himself.

  • The blatant crimes committed on the naked shorting and trading halt of MMTLP need to be prosecuted.

  • From the NYT article referenced in the link:

    "Several people familiar with the investigation said the speed with which the authorities moved in filing criminal and civil charges was an indication that prosecutors and regulators had received information from cooperating witnesses."

    Remember that Caroline was seen in New York recently...

  • the Bankman is fried, now!
  • If not an Epstein perhaps a nice Sir Harry Oakes style ending. That said people that participated did so knowing full well that they were in a very grey area of law. I'm not sure I really care that they gambled and lost same as I don't care that Vegas and Atlanta take people's money.

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